Riser Block

I believe I mentioned recently that I wanted to lift the column of my mill. The way to do this is a riser block. This mission has two outcomes: success or failure. Either it works perfectly, or I abandon ship. Progress so far:

Here is a dull picture of a block of aluminum. At this point the two sides have been decked and I've cut reference edges. I see no need to machine the entire block. It would be a waste of time to cut all the way around this block. Add to that the fact that my end mills aren't long enough anyway...and what you see is what you get.

Getting the through holes drilled out.

After the holes were drilled an chamfered, it came out of the mill and onto the granite to be inspected. The indicator told me that I went a little off somewhere. There are days when being off by .003" isn't a big deal. Today is not that day. I want this to be accurate within .001" or less. If I can help it, I'd like to see nil movement in that indicator dial. From front to back (the short direction) I had what I wanted. However, my left-right was off. That threw me just a little because I had just checked tram on the mill before embarking on this mission. That could only mean one thing: my tram is off.

(sorry for the fuzzy pic) I tram my mill with an Edge Technologies dual gauge. They are wonderful tools. However, I must've knocked it off it's calibration at some point. I rechecked and my gauges were off. I reset the gauge and retrammed the machine.

Now we're back in business. From here, I recut the block (we're talking a couple thou) and got my tolerances in check. All I need to do is order some longer bolts from McMaster and I can get the riser block installed. We should know by the weekend if I got this right. If not? I either abandon ship, or possibly have a local machine shop take the block to a higher level of accuracy than I can achieve.